


the rising

by celli-inkblots (thebeespatella)



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Genre: Class Issues, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Homophobic Language, M/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-07
Updated: 2012-12-07
Packaged: 2017-11-10 09:43:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/464883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebeespatella/pseuds/celli-inkblots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is what Wayne doesn’t—can’t—understand, that this is the difference. From the moment he was conceived, Wayne was never going to know what it meant to feel small and ashamed, even as you stand with someone kissing your neck, of the way your suit fits, about how you probably smell like deodorant and the cheapest drink at the bar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the rising

**Author's Note:**

> So I accidentally posted a draft version of this a few months ago - but I've finally gotten around to finishing it up! I'm so sorry I deleted all of your lovely comments, but they're definitely what kept me motivated to finish this chapter, so thank you very much. 
> 
> Contains spoilers for The Dark Knight Rises, as well as much melodrama. 
> 
> I know the Robin thing is under contention, but for the purposes of this fic, John Blake ends up as such. Also, I'm adhering solely to Nolan-verse here.

He sees him, six years later, in a bar in the district he’d grown up in—only it’s different now, federal relief money going towards flashy tourist honey traps like this one. Blake knows Bruce Wayne wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like this (and neither would he), so he keeps his head down and focuses on the task at hand, eyes low on the mark he’s keeping track of for this case. These days he’ll send the police the occasional bit of information—the best anonymous tip in Gotham. In a twisted way, he owes it to Gordon for showing him the way.  

So he keeps his head down, but it’s like a moth to a flame, tantalizing— _alive_ , which is absolutely impossible. Wayne’s alone with a tumbler of something dark and amber, and people keep looking at him, but their eyes slide off him in a lingering second and Blake realizes that they don’t see him at all, all they see is some guy they’d like to fuck.

He’s a cop. Was a cop. That kind of thing shouldn’t surprise him. But for all that he was always prepared for a drug bust—dead of night, trigger ready—this kind of thing was what unsettled him. The way people could so _easily_ , so casually exchange the most intimate of intelligence: the maps of the planes of their bodies and the sounds of their breath, without so much as a good, frank second thought. Sex is never clean. He stares at the shiny chrome of the bar, reflections of the low lighting dispersing over the surface, and takes a sip of his overpriced prop, so absorbed in not looking at Wayne that when someone sidles up to him he jumps.

“Oh, I—”

“Miss me?”

Blake looks straight ahead, unmoving, throat suddenly very tight and very dry. “I...hello.” Wayne is close, too close, and he knows what Wayne can do at close range. “I’m here for another case—I didn’t—nobody knows you’re…here.”

“I know. So it’s funny, isn’t it, that we’re both here.” It’s not a question; it’s a comment—deceptively mild, and Blake sneaks a glance to his side. Wayne looks the same, finely carved face with sharp lips, broad shoulders, and elegant, windswept hair. There are no new lines around his eyes, no indication that he is a survivor of the most brutal attack Gotham has ever seen, much less the apparent miraculous survivor of an atomic explosion.

“Yes,” Blake finds himself saying, almost too loudly. “Yes, it is. It’s almost unbelievable, actually, that we’re _both_ here.”

Wayne pulls from his drink. “Aren’t you going to ask?”

“No.” Blake stares resolutely ahead. “Wouldn’t want to give you the satisfaction.”

Wayne laughs, and that’s a sound that’s never met Blake’s ears before, this real sound clear even against whatever electro-crap is playing in the bar. “All right. If you say so.”

“Where’s the Cat burglar?” Blake asks instead.

“We’re going our separate ways for a while,” Wayne says, and is that regret he hears—? “She wanted to see her family. And…I wanted to see mine.” They make eye contact, direct, for the first time, and Blake suddenly feels very small, in a way he’d never felt even when he was young and alone. Now, he’s just old—older—and alone, so perhaps not much has changed. “I’m glad to see someone’s taken up the cowl, though.”

“Oh, I—I never meant to—” Blake stammers, looking away quickly and feeling heat rising under his collar. “Everyone just assumed you…it was something I…”

“…Needed?”

“Well, yes.” Blake fumbles. “I guess. I never thought of it that way, but after I quit the force—”

“You quit?” Wayne sounds surprised, almost upset.

“Yeah. Makes it hard, though. Rough hours. And…not all of us have day jobs as billionaires,” Blake answers, with a twist of his mouth that’s just this side of a smile.

“No,” Wayne agreed. “Not all of us do.”

Six years pass with the blink of an eye, hardships mostly faded into scars somewhere on the inside that neither could ever quite bandage. It’s six years in a blink that’s weighing on both their minds now, a jarring contrast with the carefree flippancy of the rest of the bar.

“So what—what do you do now?” he asks, haltingly.

Wayne scowls. “Are we really going to talk about this?”

“It was genuine interest,” Blake says, stubborn.

“Genuine interest that could turn into legal interest?” Wayne asks, and suddenly he’s too close again, and the hair on the back of Blake’s neck stands and his hands tighten on his glass.

“Jesus, Wayne,” he sighs, covering fear with exasperation. “If I don’t even know what you do, there’s no way I could report it.”

“Clean slates,” Wayne says finally. “People come to me and I give them the opportunity to start over.”

“So felons all over the country are having their records wiped clean courtesy of Wayne Enterprises,” Blake snaps, and bitterness he didn’t know existed seeps into his voice. “You know, I’m real glad that you’re alive and everything, but that’s a hell of a way to repay—”

“A police force that consistently persecuted me?”

“So _that’s_ it. What makes you any different than the people you fought?” Blake counters, feeling his blood rush, hot and heavy. “Exacting revenge on the innocent for being personally wronged by a few.”

“Well, well. Little spitfire.”

“Don’t condescend. You’re giving freedom away for cash.”

“I’m not a whore.” Wayne’s voice abruptly takes on a rough tinge that makes Blake suppress a shiver. It’s a wave of aggression rolling off Wayne like a pheromone. “I take their money if they deserve it.”

Blake can’t help but snort disbelievingly, against his better judgment. “And _you_ can decide. If they deserve it.”

Wayne is silent for a moment, and the wave recedes. “I’ve been wondering the same thing.” He looks into the depths of his drink as though it holds the universe.

 “God will be the judge of that,” Blake hears himself say.

“What?”

He shrugs, wanting to pull the words back into him—too open, too much. “It’s something my mom used to tell me. You know, I would tell you—but I’m sure you know. These people were convicted by a jury, that they underwent due process, and that their release under a madman does not constitute actual freedom, and that they’re making a mockery of a legal system—”

“—That barely works the way it’s meant to. I experienced it firsthand. The Dent Act…” Wayne raises his eyebrows, as though laying down a handful of aces.

“It was executed poorly,” Blake says through gritted teeth, because God, it’s still so agonizing to even think about it, “but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have a system to uphold until we think of ways to better it.”

“You quit the force, but you’re still there.” Wayne is cautious, taunting, curious.

Blake frowns at him. “What?”

“You can’t just define yourself in opposition to what broke your faith. It isn’t becoming.”

“Well, sorry, never learned that in finishing school. We’re not all Batman, Wayne. We all can only aspire to your higher wisdom.” He takes a vindictive pull of his drink, and it’s acrid with the silence that settles between them.

A pause. “Your mark’s leaving.”

“I know. Don’t blow my cover,” he hisses.

“So don’t blow mine,” Wayne answers with a crooked smile.

He turns back, looks at his feet and lets out a long breath. It would never change, that this secret would be played like a bad game of hot potato between Wayne, Gordon, and him. “I—I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—not in a public place.”

The bar is too loud with chatter, with the clink of glasses, and the background pounding music. Blake takes in the scene, finds his mark again easily next to what looks like a pair of blonde twins. He turns away unseeingly to the dance floor, where people are writhing against each other. Sometimes he understands what would move someone to get out of the city—all this sweat and forced carelessness, when everybody knows how self-conscious everybody else is. He’d always stood on the outskirts, because he’d always known what he was, but understanding didn’t make the disconnect any smaller.  He’s always felt uncomfortable in places like this, humming with energy directed at other people. His solitude lately has been enveloping, intimate, completing.

“Hey there. Can I get you a drink?” A willowy girl appears out of nowhere, tossing her hair over her shoulder and breaking the bubble.

“Uh—” Blake looks at Wayne questioningly. He won’t blame him if he leaves; she _is_ very attractive.

The girl giggles and presses a finger to the knot in Blake’s tie, and his head snaps back around. “No, I’m talking to you, handsome.”

“No,” Wayne says, and drapes an arm over Blake’s shoulders. “Sorry.”

“Oh!” she exclaims, clapping a hand over her mouth. “Sorry about that, I had no idea!”

“Not a problem,” Wayne replies graciously, and she leaves in a flurry of heels clicking and the faint scent of sweet perfume.

“What are you doing?” He’s completely bewildered. She’d been asking him? But who in their right mind wouldn’t ask Bruce Wayne, when he was right over—well, _on_ , now, technically—his shoulder?

“Isn’t it obvious?” Wayne, so close now, rumbles into his ear.

“No,” Blake says flatly.

Wayne pulls back, studies his face, then says, cryptically, “Your mark left, yet you’re still here.”

“I’ve found I like the company,” he says, smiling slowly and discovering it to be true. “Although the location leaves something to be desired.”

“You want to leave?”

“Sure.” Blake moves to the exit, but not before he’s pulled towards Wayne, far closer than before, their bodies pressed together, a hand raking into his hair for a moment—too close—and then Wayne leans down and kisses him, deep, open-mouthed. They break apart slowly.

“I, uh. That’s not really what I meant by that,” Blake says, mind reeling and lips tingling with contact, and Wayne releases him so suddenly he stumbles.

“I misread.”

It’s apology, hesitation; it’s electric. Wayne’s eyes are downcast and for the first time his body looks too big for him, it doesn’t fit, there is none of the grace that Blake is used to. He is human. He is human. It’s an absurd thought because it clashes so violently with what the word ‘Wayne’ means, what the word ‘Batman’ means, the image in front of him slowly coalescing into previous ones to create a jumble of memory that swirls up into his chest.  

 In some dark, deep, secret place, Blake had hoped beyond hope, he had believed beyond belief that it was possible that the Batman still lived. Batman did still live, had always _lived_ , but Blake had never seen it before, and now—

“But that doesn’t mean it’s not what I want,” he says softly, stepping forward, brushing his lips softly against the corner of Wayne’s mouth, shocking himself with his own boldness. Tonight, it seems, belongs to surprises.

Wayne all but hauls him out of the bar, tapping his foot impatiently after he hands his ticket to the valet, not looking at Blake, not touching him, which is sort of the opposite of what Blake had expected when he’d agreed to—oh, God, he’s sort of really very much entirely just committed to having sex with Batman, hasn’t he, and Wayne’s got it right, they can’t look at each other, otherwise _everyone will know_ that there is want uncurling in the bottom of his stomach like fucking Bruce Wayne is a full-time job.

The car pulls up, and it’s an Aston Martin, and Blake can’t help but grin.

“Shall we?” Wayne says.

“What, in this tin can?” he retorts, sliding into the passenger seat. “I guess, but only if you have me home by midnight.”

“Never took you for such a flirt.” Wayne turns the key in the ignition, the machine hums to life, and they’re on the streets of Gotham.

“Yeah, well,” Blake says feebly.  “I never really took you for a…” He can’t get the words out.

“A what?” Wayne says harshly, biting into the end of his sentence, hands tightening on the steering wheel. “A queer? A homo? A _faggot_?” The word comes out savage and stark, and then they’re going at what feels like a hundred miles an hour.

“No. No!” Blake doesn’t know it but he’s gripping the edge of his seat so hard his knuckles are white, and his eyes are wide. That word. That _word._ The street rushes toward them, lines warping. “How could I, when I—please.” A deep breath, a red light. The air in the car is so thick it’s bulletproof. This is the closest he’s ever come to saying it out loud. “I just—I—I never took you for a person who’d want a person like me. That is, if you still want…”

The city is passing by, black etched in neon, charcoal shadows and yellow streetlamps. It had always been comforting, this tall, looming presence, being crowded in and comfortably, anonymously surrounded. A policeman’s nightmare but a citizen’s dream.

“I could have fully respected Bane had he accomplished what he’d set out to do,” Wayne says finally. “If he’d truly broken down all the barriers, if people had really changed the way they think—that money is a guarantor of real power, that if you have money it makes you different.”

Blake looks at him. “With all due respect, you’ve never had to struggle to pay your rent until a while ago. And that makes all the difference in the world.”

“I prefer to deal in character,” Wayne replies shortly. “Which you have plenty of.”

“I never understood what that word meant,” Blake says, vaguely irritated. “They used to say that struggling built character, but it only builds—anger. Despair. Struggling pisses people off, especially when there isn’t a way out.”

“There’s always a way out. Somebody just has to find it,” Wayne says, and Blake gets the feeling they’re not talking about socioeconomics anymore.

He sighs. “Anyway, I don’t have—character. Whatever that is.”

“You’re right,” Wayne concedes. “That’s entirely the wrong word. You have…strength, courage, in spite of your fear and love.”

Blake laughs emptily, and they pull into the garage, darkness pooling around them. “You’ve got it all wrong, but don’t let that stop you.”

“I’m rarely wrong.” Wayne’s voice sounds from the other side of the car.

“People rarely _tell_ you you’re wrong,” Blake jibes.

“That’s where you’re mistaken,” Wayne says, lopsided smile on his face becoming visible as Blake’s eyes adjust to the light. “I live with the Cat.”

Blake freezes, hands halfway through taking off his seatbelt. “Would she—are you—is this...?”

“It’s fine.” He turns, and they look at each other, brilliant, arresting. “In fact, I could take you against the hood of this car, and she’d gladly watch.”

“Uh.” It’s a meaningless sound, forced out through instinct, just escaping his throat as Wayne runs a finger up the lapel of his jacket, resting a hand against his jugular.

“Would you like me to do that?” Wayne murmurs, close, warm, closer, the tang of whiskey on his breath. “Push you down, your face against the windshield, rip your clothes off, and fuck you, here? Because I almost want to.”

Breathing. Breathing is a thing. He feels as though his windpipe is interrupted, air taking a detour to Panama and back before it reaches his lungs. “I—I—”

“Or here, dirty, fast, in the back of the car, staining the seats with—”

“Jesus Christ,” Blake says emphatically. “I— _fuck,_ Wayne.”

“That’s the idea,” Wayne drawls, and suddenly the warmth is gone from next to his face and Blake hears the other car door slam solidly, scrambling to undo his seatbelt and getting it caught in the door as he leaves, closing the door two, three times as Wayne watches. His fingers are boneless; he’s a goddamn mess, leaving awkwardness trailing like slug slime. How is it that he fights crime every day, but this reduces him to the clumsy blundering of adolescence?

But that’s the wrong question, because _this_ is much more complex than fighting crime, both before and after he quit the force. Fighting has procedure, order; evidence. Loving has none of that, but is just as brutal and twice as cruel.

He follows Wayne out of the garage; he’s staying in his old estate, it appears. They go through old, solid doors, creak across teak floors, light glints dully off of old gilded-paint mirrors. It’s old and still, like it was truly brought in from another era.

“Only Alfred knows I’m here,” Wayne says. “This part of the house is unused.”

“You’re sheltering thirty of Gotham’s orphans, and they still only use half your house,” Blake muses, running a hand over the finely wrought staircase rail. Wayne throws him a sharp look as though trying to see beyond the comment, but there’s nothing there.

Wayne opens the door at the end of the hallway to a dimly lit room that’s almost spare, considering the rest of the house. There is a suitcase in the corner by a window seat and massive curtains covering what appear to be floor-to-ceiling windows. In the middle of the room there is a bed, neatly made up in cream and blue, the headboard a sleek, dark wood.

“I guess this’ll do,” Blake says, and Wayne comes in behind him, arms wrapping around to pull their bodies together.

Wayne is luxury. The feel of the cuff of his shirt is smoother than Blake has ever felt, there is a hint of aftershave that is dense with exotic smells, even his hair, as Blake reaches to run careful fingers through it, is cared for in a way that Blake has probably never even heard of. This is what Wayne doesn’t—can’t—understand, that this is the difference. From the moment he was conceived, Wayne was never going to know what it meant to feel small and ashamed, even as you stand with someone kissing your neck, of the way your suit fits, about how you probably smell like deodorant and the cheapest drink at the bar.

The murmur is low against his ear. “What are you thinking?”   

“Just—you, I guess,” Blake says haltingly.

“I’m right here.”

“I could hardly forget.” Blake turns to throw his arms around Wayne’s neck, launching himself into a sloppy, forceful kiss and trying to shove all thoughts away. Wayne lets him—devours him easily, fully, pushing into his mouth with inherited entitled confidence, exploring his ribs and hips with wandering hands, untucking his shirt slowly to creep underneath.

Wayne is luxury. The way his mouth opens so willingly, the low noise in his throat when Blake’s hands tighten in his hair, the way his hands are thrumming with danger and urgency as they linger over skin, the hard press of hips together. “Bed,” Blake manages to gasp, and they stumble, laughing into secret coves of each other’s bodies, tugging off suit jackets, loosening ties; slipping off shoes and socks. They fall together, sinking into the plushness of the coverlet. Wayne leans over Blake, framing his face with his hands.

“I’ve always wanted this,” Wayne says, deep voice sending a shudder down Blake’s spine.

“Always?” Blake pauses, finds himself murmuring, against Wayne’s jaw and against hope.

“From the moment you—you knew who I was,” Wayne tells him. “You knew who I was.”

“Wayne…”

“Bruce.” At the look on Blake’s face, he shrugs. “That’s my name.”

“Then I’m John,” Blake says, and smiles.

“Not Robin?” Wayne asks, raising an eyebrow pointedly.

“Not in bed,” he quips, then, “and I never gave up.”

“I know.” Their eyes are magnetic poles, attracting and repelling, as they both search for a way in. “I know.”

The room is utterly still.  

“What is this?” Wayne breathes, and it’s nearly inaudible, a crack in the floorboards of a sound.

“Who knows,” Blake answers evasively. “Now, let’s get those clothes off you, _Bruce_.” He nimbly undoes the perfect half-Windsor knot (he’d have to ask Alfred for tips) and starts on the buttons, pulling each open until he touched cotton—pulls off the undershirt, then slowly, almost reverently, drags a hand down the grid of flesh across Wayne’s torso, raised pink welts and white knots of scar tissue. “Some of these are fresh,” he says.

“I…”

“Needed it?” he shoots back.  

Wayne looks away, shrinks into himself again, and warmth surges down to Blake’s fingertips, a want to coax a flame—Batman had risen; but he was still broken, braked. “Don’t be ashamed,” he says, and what world is this? A world where he pushes the hair off Bruce Wayne’s forehead and comes in close, closer than he’d ever dared before, tiptoe-hands, their collarbones almost aligned but mouths just missing each other, as he indulges in the sympathy of hearts pushing towards each other; longing. “That’s a bullet bruise, that’s a knife coming through—what kind of shitty armor are you wearing these days, anyway?” he scolds, and Wayne— _Bruce_ —lights up, stoic melancholy evaporating. “Who do you get to do fix the ones on your back?” John asks him, sitting up to try get a better look.

“John. John,” Bruce says, low, like he’s parched.

“I’m here,” he returns, and now, kneeling, the two converge, arms sliding over each other. “I’m right here.”

Bruce is taut and possessive, pulling John’s hair back to expose his throat, marking his neck with a rapid pleasure-pain that makes him lose his mind; he’s rabid with desire now, shoving desperate fingers into the waistband of Bruce’s pants, keening in a way he knows he’ll blush over later, but now, now; now is urgent and full. His fingers stutter over the heavy belt buckle, it runs whip-like out of the belt loops, hits the floor and he gropes, button, zip. Each noise is erased by the next, blurred, burnt. It’s a siege of the senses; it’s a war. Bruce pushes him down (too easily, Robin notes) and catches his chin, running the rough pad of his thumb over kiss-bruised spit-slicked lips. With an air of debonair suavity that John is _sure_ he can only have gone to classes for, Bruce deftly undoes John’s pants, slips them off to lie in a heap next to his other clothes.

“No underwear,” Bruce leers with a kind of unholy glee. “Were you hoping to get lucky tonight, officer?”

“No,” John says, looking up at him bemusedly. “The laundromat’s kind of far. And don’t call me—that. That’s just weird.”

Bruce laughs against John’s chest, leaning down to brush his lips over sensitive skin. “You’ve never done that? Handcuffed someone, maybe, had sex in uniform?”

“No!” John exhales in a rush as Bruce’s hand trails up his thigh, feather-light, searing. “No, God, _what_?”

“Never even thought about it?”

“No, that uniform is for—other things—” His breath catches, hips rising at the prickle of nails against the back of his knee, his calf, tracing small circles. “Why, did you?”

“I thought about it,” Bruce admitted, moving back upwards so his mouth is brushing against a spot under John’s ear that has to be pure nerve, it must be, because it’s like every scrape of chapped lip is setting him alight. The voice lets him drown. “I thought about coming up to you when you were on patrol, you being forced to arrest me—”

John lets out a laugh, tries to turn and look at Bruce, whose hand is crawling down John’s spine. “And you would let me?”

“Oh, of course not,” Bruce says, and it’s a fucking purr, “that just wouldn’t do.”

“So what happens?”

“You seem interested enough.” John’s hand flies up to tangle in Bruce’s hair as Bruce’s hand finds his cock, touch still light, and together they’re a perfect, tense line of lust.   

“Well, it’s a nice hypothetical,” says John, voice strained.

“Long story short—” Bruce punctuates here with a tighter, sliding grip, “—you end up bound by your own handcuffs, pants around your knees, riding me in the back of the patrol car like your life depends on it, but not because it does—I wouldn’t do that. No, you do it because you’ve always wanted to. Who knows what’s going on in there, what filthy fantasies you’ve thought up—”

John lets out a low moan, pushes back until Bruce’s hard cock is pressed against his ass. “I don’t know, you’re the one in the mask in this scenario.”

“I was never the one with the mask,” Bruce says. “Not where you were concerned, apparently.”

“I guess we’ll have to try it next time.”

Bruce turns him over, lays him flat on his back, turns the bedside lamp on. The closets against the wall have gleaming mirrors affixed to the panels. John can see them out of the corner of his eye, a ludicrous tableau of skin and breathing, and here’s a stop-gap where rationality and shame come rushing back, and Bruce’s hands still. Every flaw on John’s body is bold and his breath is coming too fast. He turns his head away from the mirrors.  

“Are you all right?” Bruce asks, and John opens his eyes.

“Yes. Yes, I’m fine.”

Bruce leans down, hands indenting the mattress. John always forgets that this is what people really look like. Even Bruce Wayne turns slack-jawed, glazed over and opaque. These moments are meant to be soul-baring but they’re nothing more than a tidal wave of animal, words rushing behind his eyes so fast they blur into nothing. So instead he stares back, hoping he looks somewhat appealing, reaches out a tentative hand to rest on Bruce’s warm, warm shoulder. All it takes is a roll of hips, and he’s engaged again. Bruce spares him a hasty kiss, then makes his way down, lips trailing over the sharp architecture of a lean chest heaving with anticipation. John feels as though he is being prodded by electric sticks; the hard press of hand here, the hot swipe of a tongue there, and he jolts.

“You really haven’t been touched,” Bruce remarks, sitting up, running a burningly gentle hand across John’s ribs.

“Well, no. Not regularly, no, that’s not—”

“I used to be like you,” he says, offhand.

“And then what happened?”

Bruce leans in, smiling indulgently. He fills the space and John’s consciousness. “Somebody touched me.”

The space between them is too vast; John anchors a hand in Bruce’s hair and puts his mouth where the money is, pushing his way into Bruce’s mouth with little prelude. Slide, suck, salt. He throws himself forward, pushing back to where Bruce’s hips are canting into nothing.

“Yeah?” he murmurs against the rasp of Bruce’s cheek; the only response he gets is a nip on the lip, a calloused hand on his dick. “Oh. Oh, yes.” He’s scalded with pleasure, nerves saturated as Bruce pinches then rolls John’s nipples between his fingers, puts his fingers into John’s mouth, who sucks them in eagerly, fucks deeper into Bruce’s fist.

“I bet you’re good at that,” Bruce says, low, almost to himself. “God.” His voice is hitting John somewhere in his gut, hips snapping faster, hands clutching at the sheets, at the air. John has no idea what he looks like—eyes unfocused, legs spread, laving Bruce’s fingers like nothing else matters—all he can do is feel as Bruce runs his thumb over the head of his dick, jerks him fast and hard, drags his wet fingers down John’s chin and down his body.

“I—I’m going to—oh—”

It’s a sunburst, almost cold, muscles bunching with tension, he’s been ready for this for so long. Everything narrows to a single point, back arching as he comes, hard. Bruce is by his ear, on his neck, small, almost tender kisses across his thundering pulse.

His body melts slowly back into the mattress as he sucks in air. “Oh. Oh, God.”

“That didn’t take much,” Bruce remarks with a smile, and John throws a pillow at him.

“Shut up,” he groans. “Or you don’t get your turn.”

“Let me just—” Bruce reaches across for a tissue on the nightstand.

“No,” John says, sitting up and grabbing Bruce’s wrist. He’s vaguely aware of the trope, of the porno scenes he’s re-enacting as he leans down to suck his own come off of Bruce’s hand, but he’s so pleasure-blown he doesn’t care. Bruce looks—shocked, amazed, mouth open, and John takes advantage, rising to press his dirty tongue in, behind Bruce’s teeth. “Yeah?” he pants against Bruce’s lips. “You like that? Like watching me?”

“More than I can say,” Bruce falters.  

“You want to watch me suck your cock? I _am_ good at it. You want to come with your dick down my throat, come as I’m gagging—” he breathes into Bruce’s ear.

“Just—anything.” He’s aching with want, and John smiles. This is a rush, this is a trip far beyond any drug. This is beauty. This is power. He pulls Bruce in by the jaw, and kisses him briefly before making his way to Bruce’s neck, running his mouth over scars that undulate as Bruce sighs. As much as he wants to make this last, as much he wants to torture Bruce, he also wants to taste him—scrapes teeth on his stomach, places a long, lingering kiss on the inside of Bruce’s thigh. Then he sucks Bruce’s cock into his mouth, sliding lower, slowly, until he’s breathing in the heady, rich scent, nose buried in pubic hair, every inch in his mouth, down his throat. He hums experimentally; Bruce’s hands clench, leaving small half-moons on the plane of his palm. He slides his mouth back up, settles into a rhythm as his hand trails up Bruce’s leg to find that spot just behind the balls that he loves when he touches himself. Bruce closes his eyes. “Fuck.” It’s not quite a moan, just an overspill of breath, like too much water in a jar. His hands can’t find purchase, scrambling over the blank white pillow, across hills of sheets, flitting across John’s shoulders and face.

John increases his pace, sucking harder, pushing wet fingers—slowly, one, two—into Bruce, who only spreads his legs wider, pulls his knees up with a strained silence. John’s throat and neck are starting to tire, but he ignores it in favor of watching Bruce bite his lip, soft indentation, hands settling in John’s hair. It’s fascinating, the cartography of light over this battle-scarred body wrecked with desire. John pushes his fingers in deeper, tries to meet the slow tidal canting of Bruce’s hips with his mouth, trying to wring out every last noise; the whimper when he finds Bruce’s prostate.

The groan that sounds like it’s being ripped from a hidden corner of his soul as Bruce snaps still and then comes, pressing his knees in against John’s sides, fucking thoughtlessly into his throat. John tries to swallow it all, makes a mess instead, still rendered graceless by the way Bruce is breathing.

He slides back up for—he doesn’t know. But he’s greeted with a smile, panting, a nearly perfunctory kiss. “Delicious,” Bruce says, still grinning. John presses their palms together instead, and looks away, barely feeling the kiss Bruce presses to his forehead, choosing instead to do his best not to think, to stay lost.  

They stay like that for a while. Then Bruce moves—gets up, throws on a pair of sweatpants and tosses some to John. They pad into the bathroom together, squinting in the lime bright light, rinsing mouths and avoiding mirrors and washing hands, then they move back into the bedroom. Without the lights it’s a soft, powdery dark, and soon, without words, only the sound of breathing, they’re both asleep. 


End file.
